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Monday, 24 June 2013

Lily O'Brien's Chocolates

When browsing the supermarket shelves there are numerous chocolate products competing for your custom, attempting to catch your eye and make themselves stand out. To be honest Lily O'Brien's chocolates are ones that have never stood out to me and after a particularly bad experience with the chocolates a few years ago it is one brand that I have never really thought to purchase.However about a month ago I was contacted by someone from the Lily O'Brien's team and offered the chance to review some of their products; hoping that it was just a one off bad experience I had from their chocolates I graciously accepted and looked forward to receiving the chocolates to try.I was sent a range of their boxed chocolates + a pack of Chocolate Crispy Hearts + Le Crunch Chocolates.
They were presented nicely; clear packaging and tasty looking chocolates complete with a detailed menu of the chocolates contained inside, think Sticky Toffee, Pralines & Ganaches. The menu sounded delicious.Unfortunately I have to say that once again the chocolates just did not live up to expectations and I kind of felt that I had wasted my calories on them; I started out with the White
Chocolate Praline Cup..which I found to have no nut flavour whatsoever, it was kind of just...sweet with not much else really going on.I tried a couple more and felt equally as disappointed, the only one that was slightly pleasing was the Sticky Toffee with its oozing caramel centre..but even then I think that this was only because the other chocolates were so poor that this one stood out as being better than average.The textures are neither here nor there not super creamy, not too dry but its really in terms of flavour where these chocolates let you down. The quality of the chocolate just doesn't taste good enough. It's kind of like they are displaying a facade of elegance with the packaging and then just not really living up to it when it comes to overall flavour. All in all I was thoroughly disappointed; the chocolate wasn't creamy, it had no hints of anything, it just tasted blandly sweet. In a market that offers a plethora of choice when it comes to buying chocolates unfortunately I can't see myself wanting to opt for Lily O'Briens in the future.Taste - 3.2/10 - I really wasn't impressed whatsoever unfortunately.Texture - 5/10 - Not bad, not great either.Appearance - 5.5/10 -Packaged quite nicely but chocolates look basic.Price - 4/10 - The Ballotin Box was priced at £12.32, whilst the Essential Chocolate Bag which contained the smaller box of chocolates + crispy hearts + le crunch chocolates was priced at £10.56.Overall - 4.4/10 - A lot better chocolates out of there.________________________________________________________________________________WHO FOR?If you're not a fan of really fancy chocolates you may like these.

WHERE TO BUY?You can pick these up from the Lily O'Brien's website here or in most supermarkets.